Harrison BIRTWISTLE: Secret Theatre; Tragoedia; Five Distances; Three Settings of Celan. Christine Whittlesey; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon 439910-2 [76'01"]

Perhaps it's my imagination, but the manner by which British composers are presented to the outside world bears a vague resemblance to that country's monarchial system. There is always one living composer who reigns uncontested over the field (if there are two such in the generation, one seems to be �in waiting�), followed by a likely successor a generation back, and then a few more one generation further in the rear waiting in the wings. With the death of Britten and Sir Michael Tippett's announcement that The Rose Lake for orchestra is his last piece, attention has now shifted to that previously �middle� generation, from whom a new �king� must be chosen. For quite a while, Peter Maxwell Davies seemed the most likely candidate, with his enormous stylistic range, prolificity, and devotion to renewing such classical forms as symphony and concerto. But as the 80s proceeded, Harrison Birtwistle grew in prominence, not only winning such major prizes as the Grawemeyer, but also seeming to exercise far more influence over the development of many of the most promising younger composers, especially in continental Europe. His severe, ritualistic, often violent musical rhetoric seems more in tune with our equally uncertain and violent times. His techniques of complex polyrhythmic/polytextural �blocking,� reminiscent of Var�se and Stravinsky, suggest a world of fragmentation, modularity, recursion �right in tune with the technological revolution. On the other hand, the very same elements evoke images of primitive ritual, of tribal ceremony that so many nowadays long for nostalgically. In the end, this seeming contradiction gives the music its strength, because what I find most satisfying about Birtwistle's work is its sense of mystery. There's something out there, it says; we don't know quite what it is, whether it's benign or malevolent, but the music assures us that it's there nonetheless, and that its power is real.

So here we have two new releases, each with a centerpiece recording of the landmark 1984 work Secret Theatre. I will sort out the pros and cons of the actual discs later on, but first let me consider the music on its own. Of the vocal works, Nenia: The Death of Orpheus dates from 1970 and is one of the composer's masterpieces. With its accompanimental ensemble of three bass clarinets, piano, and crotales [antique cymbals], the piece has a dark, sensuous sound and a formal flow that is almost like an underground river �secret, slow, relentless. The vocal writing is more dramatic than lyrical, but mesmerizing nonetheless. The much later Three Settings of Celan [the DG release does not give its date, nor that of Five Distances] is not as successful for me, in that the vocal line is that sort of declamatory recitative that pervades so much late-twentieth-century music, forcing whatever is distinctive in the music to come from the accompaniment. The third song (�Tenebrae�), however, is remarkable, in part because of the power of the poem, which is overwhelming; here the voice (in its demand to God to pray to the victims of terror) declaims in a sort of modernist �psalm tone� setting, against perfectly calibrated instrumental outbursts. As to the instrumental music, the 1965 Tragoedia is the earliest work on either disc, and is a precise formal procession of eight short movements, each a sort of infernal clockwork. Five Distances for wind quintet is more recent, and is distinguished by the presence of more sustained fast music in genuine linear counterpoint than is the norm in the composer's output. Finally, Ritual Fragment (1990) has all the trademark Birtwistle devices, but pales in comparison to the other works on both programs; after several listenings, the gestures sound pro forma rather than necessary to me.

Which leads to Secret Theatre. That is undoubtedly one of Birtwistle's most important pieces, written for what is really a chamber orchestra. Along with The Triumph of Time and Earth Dances, it is one of his greatest orchestral works. The work is distinguished throughout by a struggle/dialog between a singing line (constantly changing timbre from phrase to phrase) and highly rhythmic, repetitive, and pointillistic accompaniments (Birtwistle calls the two Cantus and Continuum). The title, derived from a Robert Graves poem, is suggestive, but the work apparently has no precise program. Nevertheless, one cannot help hearing certain musical ideas as characters, and the flow of events as some sort of mysterious narrative. I have known the work for some time, both from live performance and disc on a now out-of-print recording by the London Sinfonietta under Elgar Howarth on Etcetera, and while I've loved it (the opening flute line is a wonder in the subtleness of its twists and turns), it's always seemed too long by about five-ten minutes. Each of these performances in different ways now convinces me of the rightness of Birtwistle's conception.

Which leads to the fine points of the differences between them. Boulez approaches the whole piece as a seamless line, and its overall momentum and architecture are clearest under his control. Kalitze emphasizes the sectionality of the piece, turning it into a series of highly contrasted dance movements. Those very contrasts actually work well for the music, because they keep one eager to know what new thing will happen next, how Birtwistle will now reinterpret the general conceit of the work. As to the sound, the DG recording is spacious, but almost too cavernous (despite its �4D� recording technique, which helps to further separate the stereo field). The cpo version is far more clean and close-miked (indeed, at times almost surreal, as the multitracking allows instruments to move in and out of the foreground in a way more fluid than in actual performance). Kalitze also has one great advantage in his interpretation, in that he gets his players to often play with real crispness and delicacy, a real plus in Birtwistle, which can start to sound overly abrasive and �screechy� with the use of so much extreme register writing and dissonance. I have never heard such a jewel-like quality in the composer's music before, such a bright, hard, glittery surface.

So what of these two recordings, head to head? First, if you admire Birtwistle's music, I suspect you'll have to have both. In terms of repertoire, it's unfortunate that we have the duplication of Secret Theatre, but fortunately it's a significant enough piece to withstand multiple interpretations (and these two are quite different). If the listener has to own only one of these, I'll recommend �somewhat to my surprise� the cpo, in that Kalitze's version of Secret Theatre wins by a hair, and Nenia is a work so remarkable that it slightly outweighs the other repertoire on the DG disc. But these are both excellent releases, each worthy of purchase. They mark a major step in Birtwistle's growing reputation. I would leave readers with this one thought �don't ignore the cpo release, as the DG will undoubtedly have better promotion and distribution; such treasures are often the preserve of smaller labels, and that's one thing that keeps the art alive.

Why is there such fierce resistance to the music of Birtwistle? He does seem to be the composer many British music-lovers love to hate �and pet hates are the hardest of all to crack. Still, I can see why there could be difficulties for some. We in the West are used to approaching music harmonically, but no one in their right mind would call Birtwistle a great harmonist �one doesn't rush to the piano to try and work out his chords (as one might with, say, Lutoslawski, Knussen or Reich). Rhythm is much more important: repeated patterns that hold obsessively, change or decay, are superimposed so that they support or clash with one another, creating tensions and resolutions of their own �a parallel with Western harmonic thinking, but in effect quite different. Sonority is important too. In the earlier works, like Tragoedia, the up-down movements of the instrumental lines often feel more like changes in colour than significant intervals.

I admit that in Tragoedia the results on occasions can be dry �the bare bones, with little flesh or sinew. But in this acutely focused performance a lot of it makes more immediate sense than it did in the old Decca Headline recording (12/67, long since deleted). Details are not only clearer, they mean more �the brief cello solo at the end of the �Antistrophe I� section (and track 4) is transformed from frenetic scrubbing to something weirdly eloquent. And �weirdly eloquent� might do for Tragoedia as a whole in the performance. The actors in Birtwistle's tragedy may not be warmly, palpably human, but they are definitely enacting something �a drama for shadowy, skeletal forms, perhaps. Scenes like this might still take place on dark, deserted nights among the ruins of classical theatres.

The two shorter works, Five Distances and Three Settings of Celan, show how much Birtwistle has changed since then. The polyphony can be denser, more active, but the lines themselves have also become more expressive. Of course it helps to have a singer like Christine Whittlesey, who not only gets the notes but understands the shape of the lines and their relation to the words. There are some truly beautiful moments here; not least the hushed, intimate question �Are you asleep?� towards the end of the first song, �White and Light�. But it's the final work, Secret Theatre, that leaves the strongest and most detailed impression. The first time I heard it I was struck �as many were� by its momentum, sustained through nearly half an hour. That sense of journeying, however strange or dream-like the territory, is just as striking here; what the new version brings is an added appreciation of the landscape itself �or to use an over-familiar phrase, I never knew there was so much in it. The soloists of the Ensemble InterContemporain clearly relish the twists and turns of Birtwistle's lines, whether foreground or background. As a result Secret Theatre feels even more alive here than in the London Sinfonietta recording, authoritative as that is. I also prefer these recordings; clarity, but not dryness, with colours and textures distinct but also nicely blended. As well as pleasing the admirers, this disc might also persuade one or two doubters �though I'd strongly advise them to go to Secret Theatre first.

English composer Harrison Birtwistle (1934) receives superbly transparent and luminous readings by Whittlesey and EI/Boulez of his haunting �Tenebrae� (after poems by Paul Celan), as well as the three other purely instrumental pieces on this disc. First-rate all round.